


One Letter Back Home

by comicklaus



Category: The Umbrella Academy (Comics), The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Letters, M/M, Vietnam War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:20:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26192551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/comicklaus/pseuds/comicklaus
Summary: Dave Katz finds himself writing his mother letters as a way to cope with the horrifying war around him. For a while, everything goes as normally as things can go. That is, until a man mysteriously arrives in the depth of night. As he finds himself falling in love more and more, the conflict around them intensifies. Will they be able to get out of there alive?
Relationships: Klaus Hargreeves & David "Dave" Katz
Comments: 3
Kudos: 24





	1. Chapter 1

1968, Vietnam

My dearest mother, 

Do you remember how you always told me that whatever happens and wherever you might be, I could always write to you? You would always say that "the pen is the way to the heart, my little Dave!" and I realise now you might be right. I have been filled with nothing but an overarching sense of numbness ever since I arrived to Vietnam. I feel as if I've lost myself to the war. My heavy gun no longer acts as an extention of my arm, one I can put on and take off as I please, but instead it has become a part of me. The permanence of the presence that it has in my life burdens me and my soul. I can no longer blame my weapon or the bullets for the harm they cause, but now I am dreadfully aware of the fact that it is me all along. 

I hope that writing to you will lessen to weight on my chest. I hope I will be able to find a piece of myself in the words I jot down, similar to how a composer creates a symphony of sounds note by note by note. One day my heart will sing again.

Mama, my life has been an absolute whirlwind since you’ve been gone. The long days I spent walking around on the farm and helping out at father’s shop have been replaced by dawdling through the thick mud for hours on end. Oh, how I miss the crisp dawn mornings back home where the grass would softly crunch under every footstep. I miss feeling something other than the constant presence of sweat running down my back. God knows how I long for the winters and the snow that falls alongside it! If only the untouched blanket of white could cover every inch of this war. Maybe then I could go back. 

I am learning more and more as time goes by and I am expected to become the unit leader sometime soon. For the past weeks, we have mainly been on the road. At night, we sleep in a little hutch – the ten of us. Although we won’t admit it, the constant hammering of the gunfire somewhere far away is enough to keep us all wide awake. We are all painfully aware that behind every shot, there might lie a murder, a death. On top of this horrifying realisation, there is also a sense of selfish relief that for now, _we_ are still alive. 

I’m used to calm nights back home, interrupted by the usual chicken or cow waking up from their sleep. At night, the stars would shine brightly upon our farm with such serenity as if it was the most important place on earth. Here, it lights up our camp and the blood-drenched ground, making the war feels pointless and without end. I wonder how many more of us have to die in order for their deaths to mean something. 

As I am writing this, we are on our way to the military base in Shau Valley. It’s been a while since I’ve had a proper bed to sleep in. It’s been a while since I’ve had any sleep at all, for that matter. The locals say that the valley was once a place of peace and tranquility and they all wish that maybe one day it will be again. I hope I can give them that, at least. 

I have some other news to share and you are the only one that I long to tell. In fact, it is the main reason I am writing you now. I hope that the pen and the words it produces will find their way to my heart. 

You see, very recently a young man joined our division. He’s a young man by the name of Klaus. He reminds me a lot of me when I first found out I had been drafted for Vietnam. I was so scared then. I am still scared now. But less. It would be stupid not to be scared when fear is the only thing that keeps you going. But anyways, this man. There is something about him. Sometimes, when I look at them, it’s as if this god-forsaken war never happened. It’s as if it doesn’t exist. When I look at him, I just see him and me; us. I see something worth fighting for. Their heart beats for me, as mine beats for them. 

Love,  
Your son; David


	2. Chapter 2

Vietnam, 1968  
Dear mother,

It's been a while since I've written you. Despite knowing you won’t be able to actually read this, it has still taken me the courage built over weeks to finally put pen to paper again. I guess a part of me was scared to admit the truth to myself, and so putting it out in the open like that was terrifying. However, the other portion of me finds comfort in the fact that you probably would have embraced me with open arms. Besides, I assume you already knew anyways. You always did have a knack for knowing me better than I’ll ever know myself. 

A few things have changed since I wrote you last. Yesterday we arrived in Saigon after having been deployed on search and destroy missions these past few weeks. Unfortunately, none of those missions have seemed to pay off. As a means to fight off the Vietcong, we simply barge into small farmer villages, burn down whatever constructions they have, and retreat again leaving them with nothing but the crisp ashes of the livelihood they relied on. Shortly after, our enemy simply takes over again. No one gains from this conflict. No one but Death himself. 

I truly shock myself with how easy it has become to leave such horrible things behind me. We have all become painfully aware of the fact that, after leaving one village behind, we simply march on to the next. I fear that my morality has been stripped away from me; that I can no longer return to who I once was. This war will haunt me as I live, its heavy footprint pressed deep down onto my dark-spotted soul. 

You cannot believe how relieved I felt to find out that after weeks, we were finally on our way out of the thick bushes. It was a sense of selfish gratitude. Although I had never been so tired before, my feet were excited to feel something under them that wasn’t mud, blood, and the thick bed of leaves. The city awoke a sense of hopefulness in me that I was afraid I’d lost as we walked through the heavy bush. Here, life seemed almost normal. There are shops, markets, and the light clatter of people who go about their day. Me and a few guys decided to go out and absorb all the life we could until it would be sucked out again by the war that rages on. With the aid of booze, we could forget all about it for a short while. We went to a disco. The night just seemed endless, and really how I wish it was. 

He looked so very beautiful. He always dances like nobody is watching; moving his hips in the most irregular ways. Sometimes I wonder if he hears the music at all. But then I look at him – eyes closed, and lips slightly pouted – and I conclude that, yes, he does, he just doesn’t care enough about it to let it define him. As he swayed his hips from left to right, he radiated a sense of bliss that I hadn't seen in him for a long while. He, too, had seemed to be able to forget about combat for a little while. One alcoholic shot after the other, happiness and warmth filled us up until we were covered to the brim. 

All night I tried to get closer to him. I craved to feel the warmth of his touch that I’ve so desperately dreamed of these past weeks. The longer our bodies touched, the more I desired. It was good, as much as it was terrifying. What if each touch was one too many? What if anyone would see and notice? We tried to hide our desire under innocent smiles and friendly chatter, but in reality we both know aware of the hidden yearning under each tiny word.

As the night progressed, our touches lingered, our glances prolonged, and our lips grew closer. He looked scared, the way that I once did. 

But then we kissed and in that kiss we settled our fear, and planted a seed that would grow out to become courage. Hope. 

Love,   
Your son; David


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just wanna thank noodlerdoodler on ao3 for being willing to read through my beta version and give me a lot of great pointers :) would def recommend u check out their work cuz theyre an amazing author!

Vietnam, Saigon, 1968

My dearest mother,

At around midnight, when the church clock back home would have chanted its hourly song, Klaus' lips found mine. The sweet tingling of desire prickled along my lips, urging them forward with every movement, as if they led a life on their own. One of which I had been completely unaware until Klaus Hargreeves appeared.

When I first met Klaus, it was a loud night filled with the usual rain of gunfire some place not too far from our camp. Around that time, I had been stationed in Vietnam for no more than two weeks. Despite the short duration of my stay, I had already grown accustomed to the lack of sleep combined with the continuing sense of terror that moves a soldier forward. However, you could tell it hadn’t been more than two weeks because my hands still trembled and shook as they held the long, awkward guns. This was an experience shared by most of the guys around me. Although we had been sufficiently trained to handle the guns, nothing had quite prepared us for the damage they could really do in reality. Hence it wasn’t so much the weight of the iron contraction that caused the tremor in our hands, but instead it was the awakening realization that in our hands we held the judge that had the power to decide between life and death.

Father never told me of how war follows you around the way it does. Maybe the sharp look in his eyes when he spoke of his experiences should have been telling enough, though. You used to tell me about your younger days, how he would take you out to dance and his eyes would sparkle in the moonlight. I’ve never seen that look myself. Perhaps the softness was still somewhere in there, behind the flickering flashes of madness that I have grown so used to. You still saw it though. You never once stopped believing that the man you fell in love with was still in there somewhere, buried deep behind the sins he felt he committed. 

There were two unusual occurrences the night I first met Klaus. The first one was a bomb hitting less than 100 meters away from the tent in which me and my comrades resided. At that point I still hadn’t managed to fall asleep as images from our latest mission continued to flash before me, their intensity only worsened by the sound of explosions around me. I distinctly remember that I was trying to push these thoughts away at the exact moment that the bomb hit with such power that the lights around us all flickered in distress. Although this wasn't necessarily a strange thing to happen, with bombs flying left and right at nearly every breathing moment, the one thing that made it peculiar was that as this moment occurred, there was a magnificent blue flash on my left. 

That brings me to the second extraordinary thing that happened that night. Our tent had always hosted a company of 14 soldiers, myself included, and suddenly we found ourselves with a 15th man amongst our midst. As we all hurriedly fumbled our sweat-soaked clothing over our tired bodies, they simply stood there nothing more than a black coat hanging to his feet and a blood-spotted towel around his waist. He clung to a black battered briefcase and looked distressed, almost like he had just arrived in Vietnam without his knowing. Their eyes met mine, as if trying to find the answer to whatever question raced through his mind. Under the hurried commands of my superior, we passed him the clothes he so obviously lacked. And then we got out of there; one mysterious man more than we had previously accounted for.

He never exactly explained where he came from or how he appeared at the base. But, the truth of the matter is that, aside from me, nobody seemed to care either. The army was always in need for more souls than they lost. And they had already lost a lot. 

I didn’t find out what their name was until an hour later, when our battalion had safely made it to the bus that would drive us deeper into the jungle. Ever since he had appeared in the tent, I hadn’t been able to take my eyes off him. He looked skinny and frightened as if the army had simply skipped out on training him. His eyes were full of life though, hints of confusion and excitement rushing through them. When Klaus shook my hand and exclaimed his name, a small dimple appeared just above the left edge of his lip. I wanted nothing but to be close to him. I longed to hear him speak, and I absorbed every syllable when he did so. 

You, too, were always good at describing things so beautifully that they would appear before me like a van Gogh painting. You would speak in such a pleasant tone and rhythm, which made every word sound like they were part of a whole without diminishing their individual importance. Klaus does this too. He will sometimes talks as if he attempts to create the most impressive painting with his voice, moving his hands along imitating the stroke of a brush. He so very much reminds me of you. 

I miss you.

Love,  
Your son; Dave


End file.
